This guide covers our old ProBoards v4 software. Click here for the ProBoards v5 Help Guide.

Avatars are images online forum members sometimes use as graphical representations of themselves when they're online. Avatars can be very simple or elaborate custom creations. Every member on ProBoards Free Forums can have an avatar image associated with their account.

Avatars can often be seen in member mini-profiles to the left of message board posts, as well as in their member profile pages. While members can supply their own custom images (to 100x100px), message board administrators will typically supply a default selection of in-house avatars to choose from.

Default Avatars

The default ProBoards avatar list is available to all discussion forum members and can be found by clicking the Profile button at the top of the forum. From there, click the Modify Profile link on the profile page and you'll find the Avatar options in the Personal Information section. The drop-down menu to the right lists all default avatars currently available on ProBoards free forums.

Adding Personal Avatars

If you'd like to use your own personal avatar, you can add one by clicking the Modify Profile link in your forum profile page. Once there, you'll see the Avatar URL box about half way down the page. Enter the direct URL of your custom avatar in the box and click the Modify Profile link at the bottom of the page. Note; the image must first be hosted on the web (Photobucket, Imageshack, etc) and have its own direct URL . Also, images larger than 100x100px in size will be downsized for use.

Adding Forum Avatars

To add or remove avatars from the default list requires administrator permissions. Click the admin link at the top of the page then click the Avatars link in the Customize Your Forum section. You'll be taken to the Modify Avatars page where you'll see a list of default avatars already available to members. You can treat this list like a text document and delete or re-order it as you choose.

You can also add a new avatar image by inserting a new line in the list and typing in the direct URL for the image you'd like to add. To add an image, it will first need to be hosted on the web (Photobucket, Flickr, etc) and have its own direct URL .

For example, let's assume we're going to add a grinning smiley avatar hosted at the following URL: http://images.proboards.com/new/grin.png. On the avatar list, create a new line and paste in the URL. Once added, save the changes and return to the Modify Profile page. Now, click the drop-down menu next to the Avatar option and you should see a new avatar named grin. Forum software will use the file name at the end of the image URL as the name displayed in the drop-down menu.

Reset Defaults

If you ever need to reset the Avatar list back to the default list, just click the link reset your avatar list.